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P. Kropotkin >> Mutual Aid
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And yet, the current of mutual aid and support did not die
out in the masses, it continued to flow even after that defeat.
It rose up again with a formidable force, in answer to the
communist appeals of the first propagandists of the reform, and
it continued to exist even after the masses, having failed to
realize the life which they hoped to inaugurate under the
inspiration of a reformed religion, fell under the dominions of
an autocratic power. It flows still even now, and it seeks its
way to find out a new expression which would not be the State,
nor the medieval city, nor the village community of the
barbarians, nor the savage clan, but would proceed from all of
them, and yet be superior to them in its wider and more deeply
humane conceptions.
NOTES:
1. The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work
yet which treats of the medieval city as of a whole. For the
French Communes, Augustin Thierry's Lettres and Considerations
sur l'histoire de France still remain classical, and Luchaire's
Communes francaises is an excellent addition on the same lines.
For the cities of Italy, the great work of Sismondi (Histoire des
republiques italiennes du moyen age, Paris, 1826, 16 vols.), Leo
and Botta's History of Italy, Ferrari's Revolutions d'Italie, and
Hegel's Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Italien, are the chief
sources of general information. For Germany we have Maurer's
Stadteverfassung, Barthold's Geschichte der deutschen Stadte,
and, of recent works, Hegel's Stadte und Gilden der germanischen
Volker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr. Otto Kallsen's Die
deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as also
Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which,
let us hope, will soon be translated into English (French
translation in 1892). For Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertes
communales (Bruxelles, 1869-78, 3 vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff's,
Kostomaroff's and Sergievich's works. And finally, for England,
we posses one of the best works on cities of a wider region in
Mrs. J.R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols.
London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local
histories, and several excellent works of general or economical
history which I have so often mentioned in this and the preceding
chapter. The richness of literature consists, however, chiefly in
separate, sometimes admirable, researches into the history of
separate cities, especially Italian and German; the guilds; the
land question; the economical principles of the time. the
economical importance of guilds and crafts; the leagues between,
cities (the Hansa); and communal art. An incredible wealth of
information is contained in works of this second category, of
which only some of the more important are named in these pages.
2. Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade
(Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out
that, according to Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered
inviolable, because the trade between the Scythians and the
northern tribes took place on their territory. A fugitive was
sacred on their territory, and they were often asked to act as
arbiters for their neighbours. See Appendix XI.
3. Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and
the Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zopfl,
Alterthumer des deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i.
316). The above explanation seems to be the more probable, but,
of course, it must be tested by further research. It is also
evident that, to use a Scotch expression, the "mercet cross"
could be considered as an emblem of Church jurisdiction, but we
find it both in bishop cities and in those in which the folkmote
was sovereign.
4. For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross's
exhaustive work, The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also
Mrs. Green's remarks in Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol.
ii. chaps. v. viii. x; and A. Doren's review of the subject in
Schmoller's Forschungen, vol. xii. If the considerations
indicated in the previous chapter (according to which trade was
communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it will be
permissible to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild
merchant was a body entrusted with commerce in the interest of
the whole city, and only gradually became a guild of merchants
trading for themselves; while the merchant adventurers of this
country, the Novgorod povolniki (free colonizers and merchants)
and the mercati personati, would be those to whom it was left to
open new markets and new branches of commerce for themselves.
Altogether, it must be remarked that the origin of the mediaeval
city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It was a result of
many agencies in different degrees.
5. Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich's
Wurzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances.
6. Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373-393, and ii. 66;
quoted in Janssen's Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in
Comptes et depenses de la construction du clocher de
Saint-Nicolas a Fribourg en Suisse, comes to a similar conclusion.
For Amiens, De Calonne's Vie Municipale, p. 99 and Appendix. For
a thorough appreciation and graphical representation of the
medieval wages in England and their value in bread and meat,
see G. Steffen's excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth
Century for 1891, and Studier ofver lonsystemets historia i England,
Stockholm, 1895.
7. To quote but one example out of many which may be found in
Schonberg's and Falke's works, the sixteen shoemaker workers
(Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for
erecting a screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of
subscriptions, and 12 guldens out of their box, which money was
worth, according to the best valuations, ten times its present
value.
8. Quoted by Janssen, l.c. i. 343.
9. The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p.
303.
10. Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im
XIV und XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq.
At Paris, the day of labour varied from seven to eight hours in
the winter to fourteen hours in summer in certain trades, while
in others it was from eight to nine hours in winter, to from ten
to twelve in Summer. All work was stopped on Saturdays and on
about twenty-five other days (jours de commun de vile foire) at
four o'clock, while on Sundays and thirty other holidays there
was no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the medieval
worker worked less hours, all taken, than the present-day worker
(Dr. E. Martin Saint-Leon, Histoire des corporations, p. 121).
11. W. Stieda, "Hansische Vereinbarungen uber stadtisches Gewerbe
im XIV und XV Jahrhundert," in Hansische Geschichtsblatter,
Jahrgang 1886, p. 121. Schonberg's Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der
Zunfte; also, partly, Roscher.
12. See Toulmin Smith's deeply-felt remarks about the royal
spoliation of the guilds, in Miss Smith's Introduction to English
Guilds. In France the same royal spoliation and abolition of the
guilds' jurisdiction was begun from 1306, and the final blow was
struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c. pp. 52-54).
13. Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were
condemning when they wrote against the State interference in
trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily,
their followers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung
medieval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making
no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance.
It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously
studied the subject, like Schonberg (the editor of the well-known
course of Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But,
till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type went on for
economical "science."
14. In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in
1270-82, and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire
de Florence, Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino
Capponi (Storia della repubblica di Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876,
i. 58-80; translated into German). In Lyons, on the contrary,
where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402, the
latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating
their own judges. The two parties came apparently to a
compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in 1313; in
Zurich in 1336; in Bern in 1363; in Braunschweig in 1374, and
next year in Hamburg; in Lubeck in 1376-84; and so on. See
Schmoller's Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkampfe and Strassburg's
Bluthe; Brentano's Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols.,
Leipzig, 1871-72; Eb. Bain's Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen,
1887, pp. 26-47, 75, etc. As to Mr. Gross's opinion relative to
the same struggles in England, see Mrs. Green's remarks in her
Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190-217; also the chapter
on the Labour Question, and, in fact, the whole of this extremely
interesting volume. Brentano's views on the crafts' struggles,
expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay "On the History
and Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds
remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been
again and again confirmed by subsequent research.
15. To give but one example--Cambrai made its first revolution
in 907, and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its
charter in 1O76. This charter was repealed twice (11O7 and 1138),
and twice obtained again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of
struggles before conquering the right to independence. Lyons--
from 1195 to 1320.
16. See Tuetey, "Etude sur Le droit municipal... en
Franche-Comte," in Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de
Montbeliard, 2e serie, ii. 129 seq.
17. This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In
Switzerland, Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf.
18. Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany
(Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations
between city and peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery
and Russian Slaves in Florence," in Kieff University Izvestia for
1885, who has perused Rumohr's Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der
Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter concerning the
relations between the cities and the peasants requires much more
study than has hitherto been done.
19. Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be
always correct; but his views upon the part played by the nobles
in the city wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated
facts.
20. Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the
barons, like Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many
towns which fought on the barons' side, the defeat was also the
beginning of liberation and progress.
21. Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432.
22. Joh. Falke, Die Hansa als Deutsche Seeund Handelsmacht,
Berlin, 1863, pp. 31, 55.
23. For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the
bishops of these two cities--one of them bought by the enemy
opened to him the gates.
24. See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch,
iii. 133 seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc.
25. On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's
researches (Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was
confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq.
For the early peasants' guilds and subsequent unions see R.
Wilman's "Die landlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in
Zeitschrift fur Kulturgeschichte, neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in
Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249.
26. Luchaire, p. 149.
27. Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a
political contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war
broken out in Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter
(Luchaire, 149); and so on.
28. See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c.,
p.114.
29. Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle
Ages, quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht's
Deutsches wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by
Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, Bd. xii.; Sismondi's Tableau de
l'agriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The dominions of Florence
could be recognized at a glance through their prosperity.
30. Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent
pages on this aspect of medieval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his
appendix to Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262),
has pointed out the beauty of the mechanical relations in
medieval buildings. "A new decorative construction was matured,"
he writes, "not thwarting and controlling, but assisting and
harmonizing with the mechanical construction. Every member, every
moulding, becomes a sustainer of weight; and by the multiplicity
of props assisting each other, and the consequent subdivision of
weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure,
notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate parts."
An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not
be better characterized.
31. Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, seine Construction und
Anstaltung, Koln, 1871.
32. The three statues are among the outer decorations of Notre
Dame de Paris.
33. Mediaeval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity
shops which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was
painted, a statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to
stand in its proper place in a monument of communal art. It lived
there, it was part of a whole, and it contributed to give unity
to the impression produced by the whole.
34. Cf. J. T. Ennett's "Second Essay," p. 36.
35. Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio
Grande, which brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in
1179, i.e. after the conquest of independence, and it was ended
in the thirteenth century. On the subsequent decay, see xvi. 355.
36. In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary
schools, 1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and
from 550 to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty
communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a population of
90,000 inhabitants (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.). It has more than once
been suggested by authoritative writers that education stood, as
a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed.
Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg.
37. Cf. L. Ranke's excellent considerations upon the essence of
Roman Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20-31. Also
Sismondi's remarks upon the part played by the legistes in the
constitution of royal authority, Histoire des Francais, Paris,
1826, viii. 85-99. The popular hatred against these "weise
Doktoren und Beutelschneider des Volks" broke out with full force
in the first years of the sixteenth century in the sermons of the
early Reform movement.
38. Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle
between the "old burghers" and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his
work on the village communities of Switzerland, has indicated the
same for village communities.
39. The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never
discontinued in the Italian republics till the fifteenth century.
Feeble traces of it are found also in Germany and elsewhere. See
Cibrario. Della schiavitu e del servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868;
Professor Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence in
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Izvestia of the Kieff
University, 1885.
40. J.R. Green's History of the English People, London, 1878, i.
455.
41. See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at
the Congress of Roncaglia in 1158.
CHAPTER VII
MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES
Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. Mutual
Aid institutions of the present time. The village community;
its struggles for resisting its abolition by the State. Habits
derived from the village-community life, retained in our modern
villages. Switzerland, France, Germany, Russia.
The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and
is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human
race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present
time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly
evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the
greatest calamities befell men--when whole countries were laid
waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated by misery, or
groaned under the yoke of tyranny--the same tendency continued
to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the
towns; it still kept them together, and in the long run it
reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and devastating
minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. And
whenever mankind had to work out a new social organization,
adapted to a new phasis of development, its constructive genius
always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new
departure from that same ever-living tendency. New economical and
social institutions, in so far as they were a creation of the
masses, new ethical systems, and new religions, all have
originated from the same source, and the ethical progress of our
race, viewed in its broad lines, appears as a gradual extension
of the mutual-aid principles from the tribe to always larger and
larger agglomerations, so as to finally embrace one day the whole
of mankind, without respect to its divers creeds, languages, and
races.
After having passed through the savage tribe, and next
through the village community, the Europeans came to work out in
medieval times a new form of organization, which had the
advantage of allowing great latitude for individual initiative,
while it largely responded at the same time to man's need of
mutual support. A federation of village communities, covered by a
network of guilds and fraternities, was called into existence in
the medieval cities. The immense results achieved under this new
form of union--in well-being for all, in industries, art,
science, and commerce--were discussed at some length in two
preceding chapters, and an attempt was also made to show why,
towards the end of the fifteenth century, the medieval republics--
surrounded by domains of hostile feudal lords, unable to free
the peasants from servitude, and gradually corrupted by ideas of
Roman Caesarism--were doomed to become a prey to the growing
military States.
However, before submitting for three centuries to come, to
the all-absorbing authority of the State, the masses of the
people made a formidable attempt at reconstructing society on the
old basis of mutual aid and support. It is well known by this
time that the great movement of the reform was not a mere revolt
against the abuses of the Catholic Church. It had its
constructive ideal as well, and that ideal was life in free,
brotherly communities. Those of the early writings and sermons of
the period which found most response with the masses were imbued
with ideas of the economical and social brotherhood of mankind.
The "Twelve Articles" and similar professions of faith, which
were circulated among the German and Swiss peasants and artisans,
maintained not only every one's right to interpret the Bible
according to his own understanding, but also included the demand
of communal lands being restored to the village communities and
feudal servitudes being abolished, and they always alluded to the
"true" faith--a faith of brotherhood. At the same time scores
of thousands of men and women joined the communist fraternities
of Moravia, giving them all their fortune and living in numerous
and prosperous settlements constructed upon the principles of
communism.(1) Only wholesale massacres by the thousand could put
a stop to this widely-spread popular movement, and it was by the
sword, the fire, and the rack that the young States secured their
first and decisive victory over the masses of the people.(2)
For the next three centuries the States, both on the
Continent and in these islands, systematically weeded out all
institutions in which the mutual-aid tendency had formerly found
its expression. The village communities were bereft of their
folkmotes, their courts and independent administration; their
lands were confiscated. The guilds were spoliated of their
possessions and liberties, and placed under the control, the
fancy, and the bribery of the State's official. The cities were
divested of their sovereignty, and the very springs of their
inner life--the folkmote, the elected justices and
administration, the sovereign parish and the sovereign guild--
were annihilated; the State's functionary took possession of
every link of what formerly was an organic whole. Under that
fatal policy and the wars it engendered, whole regions, once
populous and wealthy, were laid bare; rich cities became
insignificant boroughs; the very roads which connected them with
other cities became impracticable. Industry, art, and knowledge
fell into decay. Political education, science, and law were
rendered subservient to the idea of State centralization. It was
taught in the Universities and from the pulpit that the
institutions in which men formerly used to embody their needs of
mutual support could not be tolerated in a properly organized
State; that the State alone could represent the bonds of union
between its subjects; that federalism and "particularism" were
the enemies of progress, and the State was the only proper
initiator of further development. By the end of the last century
the kings on the Continent, the Parliament in these isles, and
the revolutionary Convention in France, although they were at war
with each other, agreed in asserting that no separate unions
between citizens must exist within the State; that hard labour
and death were the only suitable punishments to workers who dared
to enter into "coalitions." "No state within the State!" The
State alone, and the State's Church, must take care of matters of
general interest, while the subjects must represent loose
aggregations of individuals, connected by no particular bonds,
bound to appeal to the Government each time that they feel a
common need. Up to the middle of this century this was the theory
and practice in Europe. Even commercial and industrial societies
were looked at with suspicion. As to the workers, their unions
were treated as unlawful almost within our own lifetime in this
country and within the last twenty years on the Continent. The
whole system of our State education was such that up to the
present time, even in this country, a notable portion of society
would treat as a revolutionary measure the concession of such
rights as every one, freeman or serf, exercised five hundred
years ago in the village folkmote, the guild, the parish, and the
city.
The absorption of all social functions by the State
necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded
individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State
grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their
obligations towards each other. In the guild--and in medieval
times every man belonged to some guild or fraternity two "brothers"
were bound to watch in turns a brother who had fallen ill; it
would be sufficient now to give one's neighbour the address of
the next paupers' hospital. In barbarian society, to assist at a
fight between two men, arisen from a quarrel, and not to prevent
it from taking a fatal issue, meant to be oneself treated as a
murderer; but under the theory of the all-protecting State the
bystander need not intrude: it is the policeman's business to
interfere, or not. And while in a savage land, among the Hottentots,
it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out
thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food,
all that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor
tax and to let the starving starve. The result is, that the
theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own
happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is now triumphant
all round in law, in science, in religion. It is the religion
of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous
Utopian. Science loudly proclaims that the struggle of each
against all is the leading principle of nature, and of human
societies as well. To that struggle Biology ascribes the
progressive evolution of the animal world. History takes the same
line of argument; and political economists, in their naive ignorance,
trace all progress of modern industry and machinery to the "wonderful"
effects of the same principle. The very religion of the pulpit is
a religion of individualism, slightly mitigated by more or less
charitable relations to one's neighbours, chiefly on Sundays.
"Practical" men and theorists, men of science and religious
preachers, lawyers and politicians, all agree upon one thing--
that individualism may be more or less softened in its harshest
effects by charity, but that it is the only secure basis for the
maintenance of society and its ulterior progress.
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